Global warming 55 million years ago suggests a high climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide, according to research led by Mark Pagani, associate professor of geology and geophysics at Yale and published in the December 8 issue of Science.

For some years, scientists have known that a massive release of carbon into the atmosphere caused the ancient global warming event known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) that began about 55 million years ago. The geologic record shows that the resulting greenhouse effect heated the planet as a whole by about 9° F (5° C), in less than 10,000 years.

That temperature increase lasted about 170,000 years, altered the world’s rainfall patterns, made the oceans acidic, affected plant and animal life in the seas and on land, and spawned the rise of our modern primate ancestors.

The PETM is a stunning example of carbon dioxide-induced global warming and stands in contrast to critics who argue that the Earth’s temperature is insensitive to increases in carbon dioxide. Not only did the Earth warm by at least 9° F (5° C), but it did so during a time when Earth’s average temperature was already 9° F warmer than today.

—Mark Pagani

However, what has not been clear is how much carbon was responsible for the temperature increase and where it came from. Scientists have speculated that it might have come from massive fires from burning coal and other ancient plant material, or from burps of methane from the continental shelves that rapidly became atmospheric carbon dioxide.

According to this work, if the PETM was caused by the burning of plant material then climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide is more than 4.5° F (2.5° C) per carbon dioxide doubling. And if methane was the culprit, then Earth’s climate must be extremely sensitive to carbon dioxide—increasing, over 10° F (5.6° C) per carbon dioxide doubling.

—Mark Pagani

This finding contradicts the position held by many climate-change skeptics that the Earth’s climate is resilient to such carbon dioxide emissions and suggests that Earth’s temperature will rise substantially with atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations that are expected to double around mid-century.

The last time carbon was emitted to the atmosphere on the scale of what we are doing today, there were winners and losers. There was ecological devastation, but new species rose from the ashes. Our work provides even more incentive to develop the clean energy sources that can provide for economic growth and development without risking the natural world that is our endowment.

—Ken Caldeira, a co-author from the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology

Other authors on the paper include David Archer in the Department of Geophysical Sciences, University of Chicago, and James C. Zachos in the Earth Sciences Department, University of California, Santa Cruz.

Comments

Ocean currents transport energy from the tropics to the poles. As the climate warms, the currents can become faster/bigger/deeper to convey the increased energy. It is an enormous heat engine. If the thermocline is shifted down 1km, it would expose/melt alot of clathrate hydrates. That would lead to a sudden increase in GHGs, specifically CH4, and to a smaller degree, CO2.

That our ecosystems are vulnerable to climate change based on green-house gas increases is in no way debated by me. Let me repeat that: I do not debate that fact, and I see an urgent need for all of us to get going with this to preserve the environment.

I do grow tired of hearing so much conjecture on the part of scientists about the ages involved. This post is a result of the age listed above. The ages *assumed* as axiomatic truths by studies such as the one listed above are just that. Assumed. I remind everyone that evolutionary theory must assume these ages or it falls to pieces before it gets off the ground.

Dates such as the "55 million" years ago listed in the quote above are unverifiable, hence unscientific, if we stick to a the strict definition of science as that which is emperical, observable, verifiable, repeatable, testible, and inductive and baconian in method. No one was there. The reply to this is often "the geological collumn," which is itself the "bedrock" of evolutionary theory (pardon the pun). It's a hoax: no where in the world will you observe the strata as it is artificially constructed in our modern textbooks: at most you will have 4 or so layers in the right order, but in many other places you will have orders reversed, mixed and jumbled up. That throws a wrench in things. You find polystratic fossils of trees standing tens of feet tall through multiple layers in the geological column that are to represent millions of years according to modern "theory." You find human footprints in the Jerrasic era, etc etc. These and myriad other difficulties, nay, impossibilities (only to evolutionary theory), are simply ignored because they get in the way of a theory that people simply must believe.

The ages assumed in the column are in turn said to be referenced (corroborated) by the ages of the index fossils found in these corresponding strata, but the fossils themselves are then in turn dated according to the strata they are found in! This is purely circular reasoning. The whole framework of the geological column/index fossil dating was erected long before any radiometric dating was developed, which in themselves all depend on more assumptions for dates to be generated, none of which should be be simply assumed but are without question. These enormous difficulties for evolution theory (and I only give the smallest scratch to the surface here) demand sober reflection, not just spitting the numbers out over and over again without question or apparent thought.

Even the word theory, as applied to evolution, is proposterous. In the strictly speaking hard sciences, mathematical proofs provide the basis for laws, but in sciences like biology, paleontology and geology e.g., and in the absence of matehmatical proofs, theories substitute, and come to take on the same weight almost as laws in themselves. But there are so many holes in this theory it must be delegated to lower than the level of a weak hypothesis. A theory only holds weight until proven wrong. This one has. There are hundreds of limiting factors on the age of the earth as well that are simply ignored to maintain this theory ad naseum, and without question. That is not science. There are other commitments involved here which are never acknowledged.

Ha ha, I know I have dropped a bomb here guys and it's not because I'm trying to start a fight with anyone, though some will take it that way no doubt. The point is global warming is a real threat, we need to take action, but the dates in this report are all over-estimated by orders of magnitude. If you don't want to believe that at least think it through; I know there are some bright minds on this site. Just take what you hear with a grain of salt. Even what I say for that matter. Food for thought.

I look at reducing the consumption of fossil fuels as its own reward, cleaner air, better health, more energy independence and so on. By doing this, if we reduce the increase in global warming, great. It stands to reason that releasing millions of years of carbon in a few hundred years could cause a major change. We are using the stored energy from the sun over the millenia. Use it wisely and save some for later, we will need it.

john w,
You seem like you have graduated from the school of Michael Crichton or a
graduate of Liberty University.
I am sure you can also put doubt on ice cores and rate of snow fall and
the amount of C02 frozen in the ice. May be you could put doubt on the instruments that measure the amount of C02 is not flawed.
There are several ways to measure age using carbon dating which
relies on fundamental physics. I am sure you don't believe there is such a thing as DNA because you can't see it either or the rate of genetic change recorded in
the DNA which can be measured to come up with time older than the biblical timelines. I don't even want to ask about Dinosaurs or whether they evolved to
birds.

"The last time that life went through a major expansion and diversification was during the Cretaceous period (135 million to 65 million years ago), when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were more than six times those of today. Moreover, when life first started, around 3.8 billion years ago, carbon dioxide levels were hundreds of times higher than today's. Since then, most of the original carbon dioxide content of Earth's primitive atmosphere has been stored in carbonate rocks, coal, oil and gas."
Pierre Jutras is an associate professor of geology at Saint Mary's University in Halifax

So, apparently the positive side of global warming is the opportunity to start over - as single celled animals.

This whole article needs to be taken with a grain of salt - deducing the hows whys and whens of an event that occured 55 Million years ago is problematic at best. That said, I think people are missing the really interesting part of the article.

The authors claim that a massive release of CO2 caused the earth to warm by 5C over 10,000 years. This works out to a grand total of .05 degrees every 100 years. How will we ever adapt!?! Note: Our current warming has been approximately .7 degrees over the past 100 years, so based on this study we can conclude that .65 degrees of that warming is attributable to factors other than CO2.

I didn't criticize people, just the theory. What's returned by you are easy ad hominem attacks. That's synonymous to stating you have no adequate reply, which you happened to announce to everyone publically now.

The supposed antiquity of the earth, which this research assumes, is a sacred cow for evolution theory, yet this assumption is pock-marked with holes. Science must deal with all those holes if it's to be respectible, not gloss over them on account of apriori commitments that cannot be verified scientifically, or are even in themselves scientific by nature.

So deal with the holes I've pointed out instead of covering the entire post with mud so no one notices them. If you don't have suitable answers say so; there is nothing dishonourable in that.

Quite telling, Anon, that you mention Biblical timelines in the general context of your scoffing. I never did; I discussed things that are taught in the science textbooks today that need attention. Were you inferring something here? IF so, then spit it out.

No one said we have to agree on everything. If you disagree with what I said, then dialogue on it. Like men. You can even dialogue with me off site if you desire. But I've only seen closed minds here. I'm disappointed.

Poet, I missed your post on time but what I said in the last post can now be pointed at you as well. You are now the master ad-hominest. That does not speak well of you. Dictionary says an ad-hominem is "an attack on an opponent's character rather than by an answer to the contentions made." All you can do is try to smear me? That's the best you got? You are honorless. And your hopes to appeal to the mob make you a coward. I thought this forum is about dialogue. That is too demanding for people with no answers.

And you needed to be blunt about your own conclusions about me, did you? As opposed to tip-toing around? You're quite the dramitist now too. It was unnecessary. I will never shrink from stating I am a Christian, which I have done openly in other posts as well. You have a problem with Christians doing science do you? Then you have affronted many, not just me.

Let me set you straight on this, and thanks for giving me this wonderful opportunity to speak on these things. Christians use the same testifiable, repeatable, verifiable baconian scientific method as any other, yet they will start off with different presuppositions, those assumptions which fuel our theorizing. That is the only difference. This precipitates different trajectories in theory and hence the differing conclusions. Yet the scientific method used in the lab by all is identical. If you want to argue about that then let's talk about the grand canyon for a while sometime to demonstrate. It seems to me you are fully aware that any battle here lies on the level of fundamental assumptions. Not scientific method, aquisition of data, or "fundamental physics" as another said.

If you answer with the same tired reply that God is not science, then tell me where all your energy for a big bang comes from? Where does your matter comes from? I say "in the beginning God," evolution must say "in the beginning...dirt." Either it generates spontaneously, a fairytale, or it is eternal. Neither is science. That is as much a position of faith as anything else. Evolution is pure religion when you get to the basement level assumptions that maintain it. Above the basement level, Christians and non both alike use the same method, and I'm pretty sure you know this. It's just easier to insult and smear Christian's, isn't it? Cosmic and Macro Evolution is a position of faith as much as mine is.

Incidentally, my source was not Morris either. You need to ask these things first before you start shooting your guns. You know what they say about assuming. But you think that one's disproven eh? I disagree, but okay, let's talk polystratic fossils then. You cannot get around them as there are thousands of them.

So, ad-hominemist, reply to this one single reality I pointed out originally, since you have only danced around it so far. You seem the debating type here, so give a lucid answer then.

Please explain how you or anyone can maintain the antiquity of the earth as the geological column demands, while those polystratic fossilized trees stand through supposed millions of years of layers, with their whole root systems riped up out of the earth, without rotting, while the sediment slowly accumulated around them? For millions of years, remember. Just that one issue for you to explain away. You will find just this one limiting factor to be a huge torpedo hole in your ship, and it has sunk a good while ago. And there are hundreds of such impossibilities for evolutionary theory to overcome.

Simply ignoring these problems is not science. It's a joke. Insulting people who question your reality which happens to have so many difficulties only shows you can't answer. If you are as predictible as other's who also hate "my type," as you clearly do, then you simply will not answer and throw more insults.

I don't think I've seen a dirtier smear tactic on this site before. It seems I struck a nerve here, eh? I appear to be a threat to your system of thought, one you took seriously or you would not have reacted as you did. Thankyou. I take that as a compliment.

You also reveal to everyone that you have a bias against me as big as your head. Normally scientists like to portray themselves as white-coated and cooly objective. Thank you for smashing that one to pieces for me also. Read Thomas Kuhn while you have some spare time too.

Now, if you are able, answer my question about polystratic fossils, just as one example to start with. It shouldn't be hard for you afterall, you're a *real* scientist, unlike me, a Christian. Ha! After your public insults you owe an answer to this question I raised and others like it to the forum members. No answer to my question, or more insults, and you lose. If you can't handle that, stay out of the kitchen pal.

Lot of blah blah ad hominem attack blah blah blah.
don't you have better things to worry about than evolution.
How about this for an ad hominem attack.
http://daily.stanford.edu/article/2006/5/31/jesusNeverLivedSpeakerSays
I don't have time for your two page post. You can boil down your philosophy to three sentences very easily.
Instead of b.s.ing about science why don't you embrace
your ignorance and be proud of it. You don't have justify your belief to me
using twisted logic and cherry picking science to fit your beliefs. Have
a little pride. I would have more respect for you. If you continue, I will
bring out the heavy guns. So cease and desist.

Nordic, I don't quite understand your logic. Who says the current GHG increase is occuring at the same rate as 55 mya? I would not be surprized at all if it were higher right now compared to back then. So why must current warming be attributable to other factors?

I guess it is comforting, for some, that we are screwed and there is nothing we can do about it. Of course, even given the high likelihood that global warming is primarily caused by man, we are probably still screwed and there is nothing we can do about it. So, really, we have probably reached the point where there is very little point is debating it.

John, you repeat the same pattern over and over again just like so many other creationists. You point out some so-called examples of evidence that you say supports your thesis and you claim your methods are the same as science.

The different "presupposition" you mention is that science uses methodological naturalism. What this means is that science only permits natural, as opposed to supernatural hypotheses. This is a matter of method and means that science has nothing to say about whether something supernatural exists or not. Why do scientists do this? Because this enables us to come up with hypotheses that we can test experimentally. If we allow the hypothesis that GOD created the earth then how do we prove this wrong? GOD can do anything, including creating "false" evidence to lead us to the false conclusion that GOD didn't create the earth. Hence the hypothesis is unfalsifiable. So our investigation into the origin of the earth is stopped dead in its tracks, just as it has been for most of human history by religious thought.

However surpise, surprise, when we come up with natural hypotheses and investigate them we find regularities in the world which we describe by laws, which in turn give us predictive power. We can start to conceptualize the world in a causal/mechanistic manner which leads to further knowledge and futher predictive power. Since when has supernaturalism ever come close to giving us this benefit?

As for arguing about the balance of evidence supporting the age of the earth, your spiel is so full of holes I don't really want to bother. However to say that no one was there 55 Mya to verify that it was 55 Mya is an argument I don't think I've heard since I last talked to a 3 yr old.

(Aside for those who need a refresher: "argumentam ad hominem" is a fallacy of the form "X is a Y, therefore X's argument is faulty." This is exactly the opposite of what I did above; I noted that John W. had asserted a claim which is false-to-fact (the Paluxy River footprints, which some creatonuts said showed humans and dinosaurs lived side-by-side... until the claim was debunked by real paleontologists and geologists... and some, like John W., continue to make the claim despite the fact that it's been proven false for years!). From his false-to-fact claim, I derived the conclusion that his argument was faulty (true) and from the exact claim I noted that he's obviously a particular brand of religious nut. This is logic of the form "A implies B; A, therefore B". End of aside.)

I will never shrink from stating I am a Christian, which I have done openly in other posts as well. You have a problem with Christians doing science do you?

No, I just have problems with you lying.

Since the discovery of 4.3 billion-year-old zircons in Australia, you should have no argument with an Earth that's billions of years old. To argue otherwise is to say that your God just happened to mess with the fundamental physical properties of the universe so that the world looks older - roughly a million times older, by the Bishop Usher count - than it really is. And he did it not just for zircons, but for potassium decay, stellar evolution and everything else we can measure so that it's absolutely consistent in indicating that the universe is something that it's not: very, very old.

In short, your argument amounts to saying God is a pathological liar. In fact, he's indistinguishable from the Prince of Lies. Heck, in Eden it was the serpent who told the truth... and got punished for it! Is it any wonder that idiots like you are paranoid about protecting your faith from scientific evidence?

Christians use the same testifiable, repeatable, verifiable baconian scientific method as any other, yet they will start off with different presuppositions, those assumptions which fuel our theorizing.

Okay, tell me how Christians have used scientific methods to resolve the dispute between the theorists of transubstantiation, consubstantiation and transignification. These theories cannot all be correct, so at least two of them must have been falsified by the results of some scientific experiment (they could also all be incorrect). Which ones were falsified, by whom, and when did all Christians drop their disagreements over the issue?

John W: Mega Dittos! Evil-lution is a godless liberal soviet lie. If people done come from monkeys, howcome I aint never seen no monkey have a human baby? As for observable bacterial evolution, well, I guess that's another matter.

I also did a Google search for "polystratic fossilized trees", and found exactly two hits: another apparent young-earther blogger on Blogspot, and in a radio-control toys forum. This sounds like something made up by some creationists and present nowhere else.

Well, they were not a problem to explain in the 19th century, and are still not a problem now....

The reason I am using Dawson rather than a more recent reference is to emphasize that many supposed "problems" with conventional geology were solved more than 100 years ago using very basic principles. The people suggesting these "problems" exist are so out of date that even 19th-century literature refutes their presentations.

Poor Mr. Westendorp, I'll bet his head will explode (if it hasn't already).

I’m out of town for a few days, and look at the fun I miss. It’s long I confess sorry but it’s good for you, like vitamins. Read this and see who has a handle on things Poet. I’d return the favor and call you by your name too but you don’t seem to include it for some reason.

Marcus, you included at least some good meat in your post but you are still somewhat misinformed and your conclusions do not follow. Science has ‘methodological naturalism’ for one of its presuppositions, you say? Correction: modern ‘evolutionary’ science uses methodological naturalism. Flood geology/creation science uses the laws of nature but will not take them to their logical and farthest reaching extension: naturalism. There is a huge difference between the two. Likewise with uniformitarianism. This is a hallmark presupposition of secular, naturalistic evolutionism. Flood geologists employ and assume the laws of uniformity in their theory and field work. Yet they do not follow that road blindly to its end, but keep it in check with the assumption that God is real and has on occasions suspended the laws of nature in the past, as we see recorded for us in the Bible.

To move onto the domains of uniformitarian-ism, material-ism, or any other ‘ism’ for that matter, is to slide into metaphysics. These areas are beyond the realm of scientific method, and hence are unverifiable or falsifiable. Despite violent assertions to the contrary, this is no different here than with my Christian assumptions about the existence of God. Faith is everywhere here for everyone involved at this basement level. These are assumptions used by evolutionists that are neither verifiable or falsifiable by modern scientific method, just like my assumption God exists. Blind chance over millions of years can ‘create’ a seeing eye. Who can disprove this if one has shifted to the realm of the ‘super-natural’? It happened billions and billions of years ago…who can disprove that? Oh, you don’t like that word super-natural. Metaphysical then. The sword cuts both ways. Evolutionists loath to admit this because it levels the playing field and stops their mouths when they use the same argument against Christians, which, really, amounts to a colossal cop-out. Karl Popper, a distinguished philosopher of science is keen to highlight this, as well as Thomas Kuhn in his afore-alluded to “structure of scientific revolution.”

As for predictive power, yes, you’re absolutely right: naturalistic/modern evolutionary theory has predictive power. No doubts about it. So does every other theory. Until the next paradigm sweeps it out of the way, that is. Or, *has* swept it out of the way. How accurate the theory is in predicting outcomes correctly, based on *current* data, is the question. Aristotle had predictive power in his time. Galilean cosmology had good predictive power, and held sway largely until the Copernican revolution. Nicholas Copernicus displayed enormous predictive power in his cosmological model, and it held sway for many years, until Einstein came along. Copernican theory is still very useful for us even today, until you delve into the exceedingly small or large, where Einstein and quantum physics etc, must take over. Today evolutionists exclaim over how Copernican cosmology came to free science from the shackles of the church, dogma and superstition, etc. Shows what they know…see a few paragraphs later. Creation science also has enormous power to predict. It predicts a great many things and makes sense of data in a very satisfactory way at times that no other theory can. Look, why do you think there are scientists leaving evolution to theorize in this way?

I have power to predict. I predicted the Poet would sidestep the difficulties for the geologic column and rather use the time to hurl more insults. Right on both counts! Nice site you linked to, there. Did you author that one too? Just ignore the difficulty, that’s a time-honoured approach that has worked well. (Except for where they are cited in the footnotes of textbooks.) Even Wikipedia, not particularly benign to creationism, acknowledges their profusion. I am really thinking you are out of your area here. They are worldwide phenomena and problematic to the extreme, which is why most evolutionists will simply deny them or reinterpret strata deposition when they are present from the normal millions and millions of years required for uniformitarian deposition. I’m sorry that’s just the way it is. And now I am a liar. Ow. Based on websites Poet chooses to link you to, of course. The jury is not all the way out on the issue yet, so no one’s a liar yet. Many supporters have withdrawn support, including Morris (maybe you didn’t know that), which reflects scientific honesty. I don’t call you a liar. But hey, talk comes cheap for some, and my motives are now liable to suspicion. AD HOMINEM. You wouldn’t last 2 minutes in the courts with a freshman law student the way you argue.

By the way I pulled my definition straight out of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10th Ed. You are confused. What dictionary are you using? Or are you? Maybe you are your own dictionary?

It wasn’t just Copernicus or Galileao who postulated strong theories with strong predictability for their times. So did Johan Kepler; founder of physical astronomy. Francis Bacon (the baconian method we all love today), Pascal, Robert Boyle; the father of modern chemistry. Nicholas Steno; the father of modern stratigraphy. Isaac Barrow, who was Newton’s math teacher. Newton Himself, possibly the greatest scientific mind ever, Carolus Linnaeus; the father of biological taxonomy. Herschel, Michael Farraday—a brilliant Physicist, Cuvier—anatamist, paleontologist and considered by many the father of comparative anatomy, Matthew Maury—the founder of oceanography and hydrography, James Joule, Louis Pasteur, Fabre, Lord Kelvin, Rawlinson, etc. etc. I could greatly multiply the list.

My point? They were all superb men of science, and Christian. The great majority of them were creationists who believed the literal account given by Moses, who presupposed creation and flood geology, who were almost all fathers of their disciplines, recognized and praised for their work, the latter mentioned often enemies of evolutionism. Hundreds omitted; thousands more today, many defecting from the ranks of evolution itself. Man, that’s got to hurt for the guy who said something so dumb here as “have any Christians ever contributed anything useful to science or the world?” Almost our whole modern scientific enterprise was founded on the work of these and other Bible believing Christians. To build its house, evolution must use borrowed capital. All the more incredible then, when an evolutionist who borrows money (at least some) from my bank just to operate, will state that I am bankrupt. !!! Dismiss it all because it comes from YEC; you shoot yourself in the foot in the process. Not to mention that’s just a cheap, cowardly cop-out.

Please deal with the issues the geologic column faces I mentioned. If you can’t just say so I won’t ridicule. That was the point at first, though you tried to distract away from it (via throwing in a debate on sacramental theology ?????). The professor above assumes these ages for his work, but many question his assumptions. Speak of the logical and physical impossibility of the column holding any credence after these finds of hundreds of polystratic fossils. They very strongly infer the strata are laid down rapidly. Or perhaps the trees grew for millions of years through rock looking for sunlight? This is not a cherry-picking fringe argument: this is the bible of evolution: the geological column. When foundations are unearthed, the structures that rest on them are shaken; sometimes they collapse. Sounds like someone here is scared of this. Shouldn’t be; if it’s merely objective science it should welcome the scrutiny. Isn’t that the way science advances? “No, not when you question my reality.” Well sorry, that’s not how it works. Lots of people question my interpretation of the data out there, but I don’t send nasty letters back to them.

The geologic column, developed by Charles Lyell and printed in his book: “The Principles of Geology” in 1830. An offshoot from James Hutton’s uniformitarianist manifesto. Lyell was a hater of the Bible, and the result of his anti-Christian prejudice was this column, thought up to remove Moses from Science. Today it is still only supported by circular reasoning. The rocks layers determine the date of the fossils, but the fossils date the rocks. ??? Charlie Darwin, trained to be a minister, was in turn strongly influenced by Lyell. Evolution was as much or more a product of prejudice initially than it was any hard science. It still is today for quite a few.

Strata are usually laid down quickly, not slowly over millions and millions of years. Let me show you something more of the vulnerability of the geological column. Grand canyon shows this, you know, what evolutionists want to say has been developed by millions and millions of years of erosion and is a bastion of evolutionary strength. Millions and millions of years. Does anyone hear a mantra in the background? Where is the delta from the Colorado river if it carried away that much rock? It should be huge. You observe the meandering pattern of a slow moving river down low, but the sheer cliffs up higher speak of a rapid cutting through the rock. This has puzzled evolutionists. How can it be both? Moreover, in the famous Grand Canyon sequence, there are vast stretches where the Mississippian or Devonian systems (strata) rest conformably (that means there is no evidence of any erosion, no change in rock texture or color, not even a bedding plane between the two—which is what you would expect if it took millions and millions of years) on the Cambrian Strata. Evolutionists call this sort of thing a paraconformity. This means there are over 100 million years of evolutionary history just simply not there in parts of the column. Missing. That hurts. The Grand Canyon is extensively documented, but if you go to sites that don’t want to acknowledge this it won’t help anyone. I’ll bet the state park guide won’t mention these things to the tour group! Also, there are areas (and in other places in the world) where there are multiple strata, I’m guessing around 15-20 judging by the pictures, in rock which has been bent like a forearm flexor. Did you know mature rock doesn’t bend? It would shatter if hard, but it would bend if laid down in a flood and still soft. Flood geology predicts and explains the layers… you can do it yourself with a jar of different kinds of dirt, add water, shake it up good and watch it settle down naturally into various strata. It’s called hydrologic sorting, and it’s a natural process.

Moreover, the river enters the canyon thousands of feet lower than the highest point where the canyon is dissected by the same. Did you know that water doesn’t flow uphill? Of course you do. How did the river go ‘over’ the top? Well evolutionists must conjecture that there were events in the past, uplifts, that slowly lifted the ridge at the exact same rate the water was eroding through, in perfect balance for millions and millions of years, so it did not run off the other side of the ridge. That would be quite the balancing act, wouldn’t it! This is all conjecture I remind you, it’s never been seen, etc, it’s just assumed to be a valid hypothesis because evolutionists simply *know* that evolution happened. Did you know there is still visible evidence of beaches on the high ridges north of the Canyon? Man what does this all mean? Grand Canyon is a washed out spillway. There are areas almost as far or into Montana that drain through that area. The whole area was once a large body of water trying to drain off, was boxed in by the ridge the canyon is in, and the Canyon was the spot where the water found the softest point and made the breach, and you had a rapid, enormous washout of the canyon very quickly while the sediment layers were still soft. Flood geology predicts this perfectly with its model, based on its assumptions. I mean, to a T. Evolution, however, has many difficulties unanswered based on its assumptions.

Now its’ even harder to ignore this. Now the grand canyon has been, in baconian scientific method, reproduced and verified. The end result is a stunning replica on 1/40th scale of what the Grand Canyon is. Mt. St. Helens and Spirit Lake. There were eruptions, mudslids, lava, melted snow, etc, all flooding down at one point. It was big and made the news. The river going through was blocked or dammed off creating a larger body of water…one night the water breached the dam and cut through the layers overnight. A huge canyon 100 feet deep, exact same pattern as Grand Canyon to a T. Look it up, but from people who won’t hide these details.

In the water all the trees that got blasted clean off the mountain were piled up in the water, they started to saturate, go end down slowly into the mud and rotting bark and other debris which is naturally stratifying via hydrologic sorting, we are watching in front of our eyes the development of more polystratic fossils, and more. Absolutely fascinating to learn from if people have an open mind. It’s all alike absolutely devastating to the geologic column of evolution. And that’s all I’ve dealt with here in a very introductory fashion.

But people don’t want to hear because it upsets their system. They will not look at things that make perfect sense and unfold even now before our eyes in confirmation. They’d rather hum like a bunch of smurfs, looking the other direction, pretending they never heard what I just mentioned. The bible says that men will desire to remain “willingly ignorant” of the things spoken of in its pages. It says there was a flood where the world was judged. The wooden translation of the Greek is this: they stay *Dumb-on-purpose.* You almost need help to get as dumb as some are today. I mean, a kid knows water flows downhill.

talks about the Grand Canyon in his critique of a flood geologist. He disagrees with the author and with me, and criticizes the author, but he at least brings a more than a modicum of professionalism and civility to the discussion; he doesn’t pull out his shot-gun the first second someone has a theory different than his like he’s insecure or something. But even the author proves my point: when talking about the difficulty of an antecedent river in Grand Canyon. He says: “Most deep canyons are attributed to antecedent rivers because, in most cases, no other explanation makes any sense.” !!! That is, to His theory that his is committed to despite evidence contrary to the opposite in this case. I have a theory that works just great, it screams out right now, but an evolutionist will look the other way because he has a faith commitment to his theory no-matter-what.

Well, I’d say don’t be too quick to scoff, Poet. You have enough on your plate. Did you know the bible said there would be scoffers? Nothing new here. Read 2 peter 3:3-7. There’s no such thing as forbidden ground in scientific investigation or review. If someone doesn’t like the scrutiny of his science because his foundation is way weak, let me propose an idea. He could find another theory… But no, the alternative is unconscionable.

So go on and hate me cause I’m a Christian who knows how to ask tough questions. Continue to insult and smear until you’re merry. People see what drives that pretty quick. You go on and believe we all came from a dot smaller than a period on this page, that came from nothing, and one day exploded into everything we see. Believe we evolved from a rock and that a slug is your grandfather 10 to the power of 30 times removed. You believe that life arose out of soup when a lightning bold hit (isn’t that Frankenstein?) and it was “primitive” at first. And be happy doing it! You got one life man, then you die. I actually hope you see the utter futility in this. Man, have you read Behe’s “Darwin’s Black Box?” That’ll help take any ideas of simplicity out of anybody’s mind. Even written by an old earth, non creationist microbiology professor. Imagine that. Of course, they had to imply his use of reason in irreducible complexity was somehow religious to shut him down cause he was too damaging to evolution…

Like I said at the start, I ain’t here to pick a fight, like some here are. And I’m not going to help people further their sad business here. But I am in dead earnest when I say this: if you ever want to talk, really, I would be happy to help in any small way I can. I doubt you would but the offer is there. You will even be able to stump me at times I guarantee it cause I sure don’t know everything.

Nordic, you have misunderstod the article. It just says "less then 10000 years", which means that the CO2 increase may just as well have happend over 100 years or less. But it is very difficult to pinpoint a time-frame from 50 million years ago.